The Legatum Institute Courage in Journalism Award

The Legatum Institute Courage in Journalism Award

The Courage in Journalism Award was created to highlight the dangers faced by journalists around the world. The Award is presented posthumously to a journalist whose death in the past year, was a direct result of their work.

The Legatum Institute founded this award last year following the death of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the widely-respected Maltese freelance journalist who was killed by a car bomb in October 2017. Following Daphne’s death, and in discussion with the Caruana Galizia family, we decided to create this award to honour her legacy and to shine a light on the very real dangers facing journalists working in many countries around the world.

For this year’s Award, our research uncovered a total of 70 journalists who were killed during the time period we looked at (July 2017 to September 2018). These 70 were put forward for consideration for this award. The 70 journalists are profiled in the document available via the link below.

In order to review these cases, we brought together an expert panel of judges. After a thorough review process and much discussion, the judges narrowed down the list. The final recipient of the award will be announced on the 29th April 2019.

The circumstances surrounding each death vary considerably and the details of each are based on public information available. Many of the deaths resulted from a single act of violence against a specific individual, however some events involved multiple deaths where more than one journalist was killed at the same time.

For example, on 30th April 2018 IS suicide bombers detonated two bombs killing 26 people including 9 journalists in Kabul, Afghanistan. In a separate incident also in April 2018, three media workers from Ecuador were kidnapped and killed by a drug cartel while on assignment in Columbia documenting drug-related border violence.

Sadly, the need for courageous journalism seems greater today than ever before. We owe a huge debt to the men and women who paid the ultimate price to ensure their readers, viewers and listeners received fair and truthful accounts of the facts.

The Ceremony

On Tuesday 29th April, the Courage in Journalism Award will be presented at a reception at the Legatum Institute in London. In addition to announcing the recipient of the award, the event will provide an opportunity to remember all of the journalists who have died as a result of their work.

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The Legatum Institute Foundation

The Legatum Institute Foundation is a registered charity (number 1140719), and a company limited by guarantee and incorporated in England and Wales (company number 7430903), registered address 11 Charles Street, London, W1J 5DW